Final Drafts

I completed my final report draft, production log and made sure everything was in order ready to be submitted.

I emailed my supervisor my log.

Project Evalutation

What Went Well:

- Motivation : throughout my EPQ I was on the most part highly motivated (with the exception of a few dips especially at Christmas.) This was mainly due to the fact I was completing my project about something I am passionate about and highly enjoy.

- Keeping to Deadlines and Research : finished my research to the loose time constrictions I set myself and kept to the deadlines I set myself and set with my supervisor.

- Skill Development : Research skill development that I can transfer to university and other subjects. Also increased my independence and confidence as I had to develop these to send emails, make interviews etc with people I did not know.




What Would I Change:

- Time Management!! Leaving a lot to the last minute, putting EPQ on the backfoot compared to my other subjects, forgetting I can get UCAS points from this. I wouldn't do this next time, I would put more focus on EPQ especially around times without coursework etc in other subjects.

- Complete experiment : could've adapted to get over cost however I did not think of this until afterwards.

- Keeping up to date with everything so I didn't feel as stressed as I did at points.

- Expert opinions : broaden out my search to sport clubs not just university lecturers.

General Source Evalutation

An evaluation of sources is an important part of a research project, as the use of sources that may be bias or unreliable may result in gaining information that is incorrect. I believe it is also important to gain information from a variety of sources as it will give you a range of information and allow you to confirm information is correct.

The majority of my sources are websites, as they are easy to find and read through and usually provide details on researchers or other sources you can access to find more information or factors you can discuss. One website I found particularly helpful was 'Athletic Insight' as it explained information in great detail the information and backed this up with vast amounts of research conducted by sports psychologists. I then used this to find their work and read it in depth to use in my EPQ.

However, websites can also be unhelpful in many ways. Usually, information is cut down to a minimum which can be useful to gain a base, but when needing to expand on information you need to find more websites or more specialised sources (eg textbooks or research reports.) As I also stated earlier, many websites may not provide accurate information for example Wikipedia as everyone can access and change this information.

As a result, the detailed majority of my information came from articles and research reports that I found on websites like Jstor and Google Scholar or I found as a result of my website searches. A good thing about these is the level of details you gain from using these, as it is very thorough and goes into the depth you need for a research project. They are also conducted by psychologists in the field who specialise on the topic you wish to know more about. However many of these cannot be accessed without cost and the ones you can access may not be entirely relevant to your topic. Furthermore due to the large detail they can also been hard to scan for information you wish to find or hard to understand.

In addition I also used textbooks in my research. Similarly to articles, they are written by people who specialise in their field and the information will have been scrutinised and corrected in peer review. However they can occasionally lack in detail also and are expensive to buy unless you have free access to them.

Report Draft 2 / Final.

My supervisor sent me back my report with comments about rewording/expanding parts of my work by explaining them further. She also mentioned that I had hardly talked about my primary research which I agreed with, so as I was updating my draft I made sure to incorporate my surveys, interview and observation into my report.

Presentation

Today I made my presentation. My audience was 8 of my friends and my supervisor. The presentation lasted around 20/30 minutes including questions.

I believe my presentation went well on the most part, especially after confronting my nerves (and getting the technology to work!)

I had prepared a presentation script prior to this however as I was presented I hardly used it and instead read off the board more than I was planning too with elaboration from my head. I felt this meant I was less reliant on looking down at the paper and could be more interactive with my audience. However this did lead to me not explaining parts as much as I wanted to and missing out parts I planned on saying (and lead to a lot of 'so yeah's and 'basically's)

Presentations is not something I enjoy doing and I get extremely nervous however I believe this experience was good for my confidence in speaking and especially as I spoke about something I enjoyed I found that I liked my presentation.

Interviews / Questionnaires

Following on from my survey, i decided to also decided to conduct an in depth interview (in the form of a questionnaire) on 3 of my participants. One of these was a GB youth sailor, one a county cricket player and one a very high standard football and cricket player. 

I asked a range of questions all open which allowed me to gain more detail and insight about why they felt the way they did prior to performing. 

When analysing the answers I found that the higher level performers interpret anxiety in a way that facilitates their performance mainly as they knew they could out perform their opponents.

Presentation Planning

As i near the end of the project I must plan a presentation about my work. This will include mg EPQ journey, talking about my research, what I have learnt, my report and most importantly will evaluate my project.

I will do this in the form of a PowerPoint as this will make it look professional as well as allow me to easily create it. I will write an accompanying script to go with this.

I will deliver this presentation to some friends and most importantly my supervisor who will then ask my questions about my presentation.